True story.

Back in the early 90s, I attended a taping of a television sports talk show featuring Troy Aikman and some other sports caster type fellows whose names I don’t remember. I know nothing about football and it would not even be possible for me to care less about football than I already do. Yet there I was with Troy and the boys talkin’ football.

For those few of you who know even less about football than I do and need clarification before I go on, Troy Aikman was the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys football team back in the day when Wham was popular.  Don’t ask me what a quarterback is. It’s beyond my scope. 

At any rate, I found myself at the taping of this local television sports show. The set was designed like a sports bar, ala Cheers, with Troy and the sports caster guys sitting at the bar, having a faux few and discussing football like it was foreign policy or something of real importance.  I, along with a number of other people, were seated at small tables like bar patrons, all of whom happen to be eavesdropping on Troy like he was E.F.Hutton.

At one point in the taping, Troy was to look in the camera and read a sentence off the cue card. I don’t remember exactly what the sentence was that he read, but it was something like “And we’ll be right back.”

And so Troy read the sentence, albeit a little stilted, and everyone applauded mightily.

Except for me who involuntarily laughed and said dryly, and apparently a little too loudly, “Oh boy.  He can read.”

And then Troy turned and shot laser beams out of his eyes at me, singeing my eyelashes just a little.

Now, two things here.  I didn’t really mean it the way it came out.  It just struck me odd that we were applauding a college graduate for reading a sentence that any second-grader could read. It simply amused me.

The second thing is that I hadn’t really intended to say that outside of my head. Sometimes there is a mix-up between my tongue and my brain and that happens – the tongue does not get the memo that the message is proprietary, for internal distribution only.  Sometimes my brain threatens to fire my tongue, but the tongue has tenure and so it’s a problem. (See James 3:1-9) 

So, all that to say, “Sorry Troy. I think you’re swell. And a great reader too.”

It’s never too late to say you’re sorry and just now I really needed to get that off my chest.

Sometimes, in a fit of motherly passion, I”ll scoop Sean up and smother him with kisses, telling him he’s so cute that I can’t stand it.  And then he squiggles and wiggles out of my arms and runs off, laughing and yelling “Yucky!”

Last week, we were at the grocery store, and as we were checking out, he was chatting up the cashier, a grandmotherly type. 

“You’re cute!” she cooed at him as I ran my credit card through the machine.

“Yeah but my mom can’t stand me,” he told her.  “She says that all the time.”  And then for some reason,  he offered her this weird, crooked, sad little smile.

The cashier narrowed her eyes and looked at me suspiciously.

It probably didn’t help that Sean had a dirty face and had dressed himself that morning as a Hip Hop Rap artist on a golf outing.

I shut my eyes and shook my head ever so slightly. 

The effort it was going to take to explain that it was the level of his cuteness that I can’t stand vs. him which I can stand very tolerably (sigh), exceeded my mental bandwidth at that particular moment.  So I didn’t even try. 

I think I exceeded my mental bandwidth just typing that sentence.

In some local ladies Bible study, there’s a Wal-Mart cashier asking for prayers for the little boy whose mother can’t stand him.  

The other day I was on a treadmill at the health club, listening to my iPod and minding my own business. That is, I was minding my own business as much as anyone can at a health club.  The reality is that we are all uniformly packed in together like a can of spandex-wearing, walking sardines.  We avert our eyes and just pretend to mind our own business.

Try as I might to block out all that is going on around me, I am acutely aware of who is walking on either side of me, in front of me, how fast they are going, what they are wearing and unfortunately, sometimes even what they smell like.  Sardines. 

The treadmill to my left had no one on it until a young gal in her 20s jumped on.  She did a few calf stretches and then pushed a few buttons to make it go, but nothing happened.

If you are female, then you know then that when confronted with something electronic that doesn’t work, the How Ladies Fix Stuff handbook instructs you to find a wire and jiggle it.  After that, according to the Chapter Two, you locate the plug and unplug it and then plug it firmly back in. Repeat six or seven times.  If you have PMS, skip that part and go directly to step #3 and prod it with your toe — or – if no one is around, execute a swift kick to the largest surface area.  Step #4, give up and go shoe shopping at a mall that has a Godiva store.

But I have digressed from my fascinating tale of a broken treadmill.

So she pushed the buttons again, jiggled the magnetic safety key and then she gave up and got on another treadmill two rows ahead.  A slight deviation from the handbook, but problem solved! She probaby went shoe shopping after she finished working out.

About a minute after that another gal jumped on the same broken treadmill.  Being the good citizen that I am, a good citizen who can’t mind her own business, I  took my earphones out of my ears and informed her that that treadmill was broken.  “Oh,” she said, fully believing me.  Then she hopped off and got on the treadmill to my right which had just become available, but unfortunately had an obstructed view of the televisions.

About two minutes after that, another young gal hopped on the broken treadmill. She had her iPod on and truly was minding her own business – there was no getting her attention.  She did a few minutes of Olympic gymnast-style stretching and then a full minute of pulse checking and iPod adjusting. The whole time, I keep glancing over to see if I can get her attention to warn her that the machine is broken.  But to her, I did not exist.  I could have had a heart attack and rolled off the back and she would not have noticed.  As she reaches for the ON button, I cringe and even feel a little sorry for her, because I know what is about to happen – nothing.  But nothing doesn’t happen. The belt starts merrily whirring around and around. She leaps on and begins loping like a gazelle in springtime.

At this point, I’m trying to keep my eyes focused straight ahead, because I sense that the gal to my right, who is not watching television because she can’t really see it, is staring a hole though me and glaring at gazelle girl who is bounding along enjoying Regis and Kelly.

I considered that perhaps I should pull out my earphones and offer an explanation, but decided instead to put my head down and mind my own business.

Today I had to go to Wal-Mart. And just now I’m cringing at the thought of how many posts I have started with that sentence.

Since it was a bit on the chilly side today, I pulled out a pair of casual coffee-colored suede-ish (not to be confused with Swedish) lace-up shoes that I really love and have had for a number of years. They are the kind of shoes that you love so much that you go back and buy them in another color. And I feel perfectly okay using “you” in that sentence because I’m pretty sure many of “you” do the same thing.

The problem with getting to be my age (and I say that as if there is only one problem) is that sometimes certain events, like say the purchase of a pair of shoes, seems like one or two years ago when in fact it was more like eight or nine years ago.  And sometimes, like today, that is a problem because certain materials have a shelf life. There is a finite period of time before decomposition and disintegration of certain materials occur.  And this disintegration, that might occur, needs to be timed juuuuust right.

Unfortunately, today was one of those days when apparently my timing was off.

Because I left the house wearing two shoes that looked like this.

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And I came home wearing one of those shoes, looking like this.

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I was merrily strolling  down the produce aisle in my favorite suede-ish type shoes when I had some sort of shoe blow out.

All of a sudden, and for no discernable reason, I was half an inch shorter. I looked down and I was standing in a pile of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. I looked behind me and saw a trail of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. It was like I was leaking Oreo crumbs out of the leg of my jeans. I felt like I should sweep up or something. Then I realized that sweeping up in Wal-Mart would be an all-time low, even for me – possibly even lower than the day I flushed my sunglasses at Lego Land.

Quite honestly I didn’t really know what I should do.  I considered heading over to the shoe department and putting on another pair of shoes, but the thought of walking around the store in plastic shoes shackled with elastic seemed somewhat less cool than leaving a trail of Oreo-looking detritus in my wake.

So I just schlumped along with my head held high trying to rise above my crumbling, disintegrating pride.

Sean has a birthday coming up soon and his father and I have promised him a bicycle. So for the last month or so, every time we go to Wal-Mart, which is just about every day, we have to go to the bike department and test drive the various models.

If you have spent any time in the Wal-Mart bicycle department, then you know that as well as having a few floor models “on the floor” they also display them by hanging them from the front tire by a hook. If you have a child, then you also know that the one bike they want to test drive is not on the floor, but hanging from a hook.

Yesterday we were in Wal-Mart and we weren’t in a hurry, so when Sean asked me if I would get him a certain bike down from a hook, I agreed.

Removing those little 20-pound bikes from their hooks is not as easy as it looks.

In order to get the bike he wanted, I had to bend over slightly so as to not bump my head on the bike suspended directly above it. And then in some sort of Tom Cruise Mission Impossible style move, I had to delicately lift and turn the wheel just so at just the right angle at just the right moment in just the right sequence without gouging my eye out with the handle bar of the neighboring bike or knocking down the entire display of floor models like a line of dominos. Although that would have been a classic Antique Mommy moment. But the bike on the hook, it wouldn’t budge. It was like it had been super glued to the hook. So I did what I always do when something doesn’t work – I jiggled it and then I jiggled it harder.

When it finally began to give, I straightened up just a bit so that I could raise it up and off the hook. And that’s when the strap of my backpack purse caught on a bicycle that was hanging behind me. And I was kind of stuck. I wasn’t exactly suspended, but I was on my tip toes and I was tethered and I kind of felt like a guy in a parachute caught in a tree. And I felt mighty ridiculous. And so I began praying. “Dear kind and merciful God, please, I beg of you, don’t let any of my neighbors or anyone I know be anywhere near the bicycle department right now. And also, please God, let the security cameras not be working. Thank you and Amen.”

So then.

I put the bike back on its hook and then I tried to reach around and unhook myself. After a good bit of flapping and twisting, it became apparent to me and the little boy who found the whole scene extreeeemely amusing, that I can no longer access that area between my shoulder blades as I could in days of yore and youth.

Then in a move that normally should be reserved for someone wearing sequins and featured on Dancing with the Stars — and never by a mom in a Wal-Mart – I did a little shoulder shimmy and wiggled myself free of the backpack. Just like Houdini.

Sean squealed and clapped his hands when I finally got his bike down and then he hopped on it and gleefully took a few wobbly laps around the bicycle aisle hollering for all the store to hear, ”Look at me Mom! Look at me!”

And the sight of that nearly four-year-old boy gleefully pedaling away from me, so happy and so proud to be riding a big bike, put an ostrich egg in my throat.  I stood in the bike department of Wal-Mart trying not to cry.  The journey of his life has begun and every day in some small way, he is pedaling away from me.